


Our Universe

by calebandnott



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, Plantboy!Phil, Spaceboy!Dan, University AU, don't let those tropes fool u this is incredibly angsty at times lmao, pastel!dan, punk!phil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8439634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calebandnott/pseuds/calebandnott
Summary: A University AU where Dan and Phil have the appearances of Pastel!Dan and Punk!Phil and the interests of Spaceboy!Dan and Plantboy!Phil. Fun tropes combined with angsty reality! Phil is in his last year of university and feels completely lost - until he meets Dan, a passionate first year, in Astronomy 101. Existential angst and nausea-inducing fluffiness occur over the course of the semester as Phil falls in love with the boy who teaches him a whole new way of looking at the universe.





	1. 6 Billion Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: very brief mention of body image issues; mentions of eating (no detailed description); potential parental emotional abuse (just mentions of a fight but could be triggering to people who have experienced abuse); general worrying about school, not knowing what to do in the future; brief mention of death; mention of suicide; doubts/discussions about religion; age gap is 4 years but there’s worrying about being predatory; brief mention to metaphorical drowning; mentions of metaphorical bugs (feeling butterflies); some swearing; very, very vague allusions to sex but nothing detailed whatsoever and the chastest of sexual feelings.
> 
> A/N: This fic has been in the works since April (it’s currently November) so I kind of feel like I’ve asexually reproduced a child out of an egg from my ass, in the wise and disgusting words of Dan Howell. 
> 
> Except it wasn’t entirely asexually reproduced. (Creepiest way to start thanking people, good job Emily.) I’m so grateful to my beta, Anna, and artist, Felisa, for their contributions to this. They were really just a dream to work with and I feel incredibly lucky. 
> 
> A shout out to all my twitter pals who encouraged me and who have given me such valuable perspectives on these dumb boys and life in general over the past few months. To Kaitie for looking it over, you are incredible!! To Blakely for being an amazing friend and having such a beautiful view of the universe.
> 
> Every single Radiohead scene is dedicated to Ize.
> 
> I stopped writing for a few years. It was awful. Writing this has been so important to me. Thank you Dan and Phil for inspiring me to write again. (All this cheese and pretension is just preparing you for the fic honestly, thank me later. More notes written as if I was a famous director giving desperate fans insider info about their favourite movie can be found at the end of the fic.)

It was the first class of the new semester and Phil was ten minutes late. He spent a minute pacing outside the door to the lecture hall, before finally willing himself to face the embarrassment and try to enter as quietly and inconspicuously as possible. He slid through the door and, despite his best efforts to not make a sound, noticed with dread that a few dozen eyes turned to him. Sending a word up to the universe that the prof wouldn’t call attention to him, he quickly scanned the room, hoping to find an empty seat in one of the back rows.

Unfortunately, all easily accessible seats had been taken and he’d have to climb over numerous legs in order to get a spot (something that was bound to end in disaster as he was infamously clumsy). Phil cursed students’ lazy tendency to take the aisle seats and reluctantly looked towards the front of the room. He noticed that the far right of the first row was empty save for one person. Of course he’d get stuck with the first row on the first day of class. At least it was a large lecture hall, Phil thought, as his lateness caused less distraction than if it had been a small seminar. One late person in a sea of a thousand people barely caused a stir, even as he noisily made his way to the front of the room. His dark blue hair, piercings, and tattoos got the occasional double take, but looks like his were a fairly normal sight on campus (nothing like the stares he got went he went home to his small - and small-minded - town). Here, he was just another student, like everyone else – nothing special or important about him. He might as well just be a student number with a face attached.

Phil reached the front of the room and sat down in a spot a few seats away from the only other person in the row. He scrambled to pull his notebook and textbook out of his already overladen bag, and cursed himself for his disorganization as he tried to feel around the bottom for something to write with. It was Phil’s last semester of uni, and he still hadn’t gotten it together. During the winter break, he imagined that this year would be the one that he’d finally get his shit together, but here he was wearing rumpled clothes he had found on his floor that morning and searching through a bag filled with last semester’s exams, assorted garbage, and a few books he had thrown in last minute.

Thankfully, just as Phil was beginning to dread having to ask someone for a writing utensil, he found a pen nestled in between the pages of _Middlemarch_ , the book he had begun to painfully read for his upcoming Victorian Lit class. He quickly tested it on the one of the notebook pages and, thankfully, it had some life in it yet. Unlike Phil.

This entire process had taken him about two minutes, which was more or less an eternity as time moved differently while in a lecture. The thought briefly crossed his mind that if he would just give in and takes notes on a laptop like every other person, he wouldn’t have to go through this song and dance every single time. A pretentious English major, however, clings desperately to the dying art of paper and pen just as they cling to the notion that studying something they love will, eventually, help them in the job market.

Writing materials at the ready, Phil finally tuned into the professor’s lecture. He was already hopelessly lost. The professor might have been going over the syllabus, as he was talking at light-speed about, well, light-speed, among other science-y terms that Phil didn’t understand in the slightest. He caught something about colours – he knows colours, he loves colours! – but instantly lost interest as this was followed up with: “the spectrum of visible light that splits into the rainbow of colour that we can perceive is only a tiny part of the complete range of light’s wavelengths: the complete spectrum of light is called the electromagnetic spectrum, all the way from the longest wavelength, infrared, or radio waves, to the smallest wavelength, called gamma rays. You’ll be learning how to measure to this spectrum this semester.” Phil understood so little of this that he actually found himself becoming angry with the prof. Did he just say that radio waves were infrared light? Nevermind learning how to measure this stuff, he apparently had to go back to elementary school and learn how colours worked.

Phil tried to scribble down things that sounded important, but this turned out to be a hopeless cause as he had no idea of the context of the prof’s ramblings. He eventually gave up, and started drawing little doodles on the side of his notebook and thinking about the latest episode of Buffy that he had watched that morning. This was not a promising start to the semester, but start out how you mean to go on, right? Phil had absolutely no interest in this class and tried to ignore his stomach sinking as he thought about doing this twice a week until April.

Lost in reverie about his increasingly hopeless situation, and currently wondering if his program coordinator had been wrong and there was another way for him to get a science credit before graduating, he suddenly tuned in to his professor at the mention of the word quiz:

“..quiz today, just to gauge the varying levels of familiarity with Astronomy. While a few of you will probably continue on with your studies in this department, I suspect most of you are trying to get your science credit out of the way and might not have taken any science courses since high school. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! I just want an idea of where everyone is, so if you could get out your clickers…”

A quiz, on the first day? Phil thought. He hadn’t planned on actually using his brain today. He was still in break mode where all that mattered was which video game he would be playing that day. Phil reluctantly pulled the little white remote, or ‘clicker,’ out of his bag. He was relieved that not everyone in the class was a science student, but hated that the professor had seen right through him. He had stopped taking science classes in high school as soon as he could, and could hardly remember anything other than “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” (whatever that means). However, as soon as the first question flashed on the screen, he felt relieved. This was going to be easy.

HOW MANY STARS ARE THERE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM?  
A. 6 BILLION  
B. 6 MILLION  
C. ONE  
D. NONE

Phil quickly tapped A on his clicker, feeling satisfied with himself.

“Ok, everyone got your answers in? Here are the results…” The professor tapped a button and on the board flashed:

A. 2 people  
B. 0 people  
C. 1407 people  
D. 0 people

“If you’re one of the 1407 people who answered C, you’re correct! There is indeed one star in the solar system – the sun! If you’re one of the two people who answered A…well, I’m sure we’ll get through to you eventually. University is for learning after all.”

Phil sunk in his seat, turning bright red. Of course, the fucking solar system! He had assumed that the solar system was synonymous with ‘the universe,’ like an idiot. The answers were anonymous and not for marks, but the shame was punishment enough. He was going to graduate with an honest to God university degree in a year, and he couldn’t tell apart the difference between the solar system and the universe? He considered leaving the class right there and then, and glanced over to see if there was an exit near the side of the room that he could quietly slip out of.

As Phil looked over to his right, he noticed that the other person in the row was turning as bright pink as the sweater they were wearing. Phil noticed, slowly emerging from the cocoon of shame that he had been constructing around himself, that they were an incredibly attractive person. A pastel flower crown was nestled in soft brown curls and their warm features straddled the line between traditionally feminine and masculine. Phil was usually one to go for the manly-man type, but something about this person’s strong, thick brows contrasted with soft downy hair and an adorable dimple made him do a double-take. They had made sweater paws out of their oversized pink sweater, and were apparently trying to curl into a ball in their seat and make themselves as small as possible.

Phil considered himself a pretty shy person who wasn’t prone to introducing himself to strangers, a trait that had gained him very few friends during his years at uni. He was, however, a notorious flirter. As soon as he saw someone cute, a switch flipped in his brain and somehow he was able to go from a nervous introvert to a charming philanderer, forgiving the pun. This was an act that could easily crumble, disintegrating upon the slightest rejection or the realization that the person was far out of his league. However, at this moment, his mind was screaming at him to speak to this person who had also apparently failed to comprehend the very basics of Astronomy.

Waiting until he was sure the prof wouldn’t notice them, Phil leaned over to what was now just a small pink ball, whispering softly as not to disrupt, “Did you answer A as well?”

The pink ball unravelled slightly, looking up tentatively at Phil. They had beautiful eyes, thick black lashes lining warm brown irises. They blinked slowly, a small sheepish smile spreading across their face, lighting up their eyes even as they looked down again. “Yeah,” they muttered, “I feel so stupid now.”

Phil’s breath caught in his throat slightly. Their voice was so lovely, not at all like the rough accents he was used to. It was articulate - posh, almost. He put on his signature flirty smile and answered: “Same. Should we drop out before anyone suspects it was us?”

They laughed, and shook their head slightly. Phil felt giddy - it was honestly a toss up casually talking to people in class - or anywhere, for that matter. Some people were weirded out by how he looked with his tattoos and piercings, as if in this day and age that said anything about your personality, and other people were put off by his ‘weirdness.’ This left an incredibly slim margin of people who were willing to get to know him, even though he was kind to everyone he met.

“Maybe we should drop out,” they said, now fully unravelled from their self-constructed sweater knot. “I’ve got so much invested in this class though. I basically had to sell an organ to buy the textbook and this stupid clicker. And! Look, I bought this pin and everything. I could deal with wasting money on books, but a pin?” They lifted up their backpack, which would have been a plain white bag if it hadn’t been completely covered with pins and patches. Phil noticed a few pins, including a wolf he recognized from the game The Witcher, a pastel rose, and even a doge (Really? Phil thought), before he noticed the one that was being pointed out: a pin in the style of a ribbon with the words spaceboy written in cursive.

“Spaceboy?” Phil asked, “Is that like a superhero or something?”

The boy blushed even more than he already was and stammered, “Oh, no, just… um, I’m a boy that likes space? I dunno, I thought it was cute but, uh, it’s kinda silly now that I look at it…”

“No, it’s cute!” Phil quickly replied. “And it’s a bonus that it sounds like a superhero, really,” Phil said. The professor was still at the other end of the room, still droning on about the syllabus. Phil hated the first day of classes. He turned back to the boy. “So, you like space then? You’re actually interested in all of this stuff?”

“Oh yeah! I mean, clearly I don’t really know what I’m talking about and I’m pretty shit at science, but I love space. My mum actually said, and I quote, ‘if only he could be more obsessed with things that actually mattered.’ I’ve been obsessed ever since I was a kid. Like black holes, right, literally no one understands them. We have ideas and theories but I don’t even know if the human mind can comprehend it. Like even Professor Reid, he’s one of the best profs in Astronomy and he even wrote a whole book about black holes but it’s basically just about how no one really understands anything about them.” His eyes lit up as he spoke in a rushed hushed voice. At the conclusion of this long speech, he seemed to realize he was rambling and embarrassedly covered his mouth his hand. Doing so revealed a glimpse of a few rings on his fingers, which complemented a dainty silver moon choker around his neck. Phil looked on amused – he had no idea what he was going on about, but it was pretty cute to see a boy in a flower crown rambling about space. “But, um, yeah. I like space.” He laughed sheepishly.

“I feel pretty bad now about just taking this course because I need it to graduate,” Phil replied. “I literally could not care less about this stuff.” He noticed that the boy looked down sadly at this, probably feeling shot down by his off the cuff comment. He tried to backtrack by saying, “Maybe some of your enthusiasm will rub off on me?” The boy looked back up, looking a bit startled. Subtle unintentional innuendo aside, that was pretty forward for casual small talk between classmates. Phil inwardly cursed himself for being such a horrific combination of awkward and flirty.

Before he could say anything more, the professor looked warningly over at them. ( _This is why I never sit at the front,_ he thought to himself.) Phil shut up and tried to pay attention to the prof explaining something about orbits, which was difficult when he was acutely aware of a really cute boy sitting a few feet away from him who probably thought he was the weirdest person ever. He kept catching glimpses of the boy out of the corner of his eye, adjusting his hair or tapping away at his laptop. Phil wanted to talk to him again but didn’t know what to say - and besides, the prof had moved over to their side of the room. This situation led Phil to be even more distracted than normal.

The university was large and in a big city, so Phil was used to seeing attractive people daily. But there was something about this boy. He obviously didn’t entirely adhere to gender roles which Phil appreciated. While Phil himself adhered to somewhat more of the conventional expectations of what his gender ‘should’ wear according to society, sticking usually to t-shirts and jeans, he was far from traditional, with tattoos more or less from his neck to his toes and about a dozen piercings. Though the boy in the pink sweater and light-wash jeans could not have been dressed more opposite to Phil in terms of fashion, Phil always felt more connected to people who were outside the societal box, so to speak. But it was the boy’s demeanour that really struck Phil - he had such an intense liveliness in him and spoke about space with a fierceness and passion that intrigued Phil. He hoped that he hadn’t freaked him out by coming on too strongly too quickly.

A half hour later and people started packing up to go. By this point, Phil had already gone through several made up conversations in which the boy told him he was a disgusting pervert and to never sit near him again. He was quickly shoving his pen and paper in his bag in an attempt to flee the scene of the crime as soon as possible, when he heard the boy say: “I’m Dan by the way.” Phil looked up, amazed to see that the boy was gently smiling at him and not, in fact, hurling obscenities his way.

“Phil,” he replied, half a heartbeat too late.

“I’ll see you on Thursday, Phil.”


	2. Nothing to Doubt and Nothing to Fear

A few weeks into the semester and Phil was already in mid-term panic mode. As an English major, his exams were mostly in-class essays, which, despite what other majors might think, were incredibly difficult to study for. He had spent the past week frantically trying to make up for his procrastination (ie. barely reading anything all semester) by skimming a few dozen novels, annotating multiple poem collections, and reading various bits of criticism here and there. By Saturday, his head was so crammed with literature that he was getting Dickens confused with Brontë and Faulkner mixed up with Hemingway.

It was a gloomy Saturday afternoon in the library (truth be told any Saturday spent in the library was a gloomy one, but this one was particularly depressing) and Phil was studying. Well, he had his books out in front of him and he was staring at the pages. He’d only read one book out of six for his seminar on war era novels and was hopelessly contemplating how to best go about bullshitting his way through the exam, when a sudden feeling of immense dread washed over him. A feeling that could only come from forgetting something incredibly important. As all the pieces clicked into place in his brain, he shouted: “Astronomy!”

Only a couple heads turned towards him (someone had been sobbing for the better part of an hour and most people by then had put in headphones to drown out the noise), but Phil was still embarrassed, by both his exclamation and the fact that he forgot about his Astronomy exam. How could he have forgotten?

Lost in the maze of trying to remember characters and plots and memorizing poetic terms ( _what the hell is the difference between metonymy and synecdoche again?!_ ), he had completely forgotten about his Astronomy midterm which was... Monday. As in two days from now. Shit. He didn’t even have his Astronomy textbook on him. By this point he had begun to associate Tuesdays and Thursdays with seeing Dan rather than, you know, attending a lecture that was crucial for getting his degree. He had been so consumed by his other courses and his quickly budding crush on his classmate that he hadn’t really retained any important astronomical information. He wasn’t even sure what was going to be on the exam.

Desperate, he pulled out his phone and, his fear repressing any nervousness about texting his crush, searched for Dan’s name in his contact list. The two had gotten quite chatty over the course of the semester and had exchanged contact info when Phil missed class and needed the notes sent to him. They had texted back and forth a few times, but it was mostly “coming to class today?” from Phil and alien and peace sign emojis from Dan. Phil frequently found himself typing out slightly flirty texts and then quickly deleting them, remembering the embarrassing incident on the first day of class.

The text he was typing now was far from flirty, however. With shaky panicked hands he typed out:

‘So like an idiot I completely forgot we have an exam on Monday. In the library freaking out rn. Help?’

He put his head down on the desk and thought about possible careers he could have without a university degree. He was too clumsy for restaurants, too awkward for retail, and probably wouldn’t be qualified enough for even an internship at an office. He was contemplating the possibility of stripping when he felt his phone vibrate. He quickly read the reply:

‘omg phil i can’t believe you forgot, he’s literally reminded us of it at least 17 times lol’  
_Yeah and I’ve been busy thinking about you all class, and staring at you, and wondering what to say next to you, and -_. Before he could finish his train of thought or type out a reply, his phone buzzed again:

‘which library are you in? i could come and meet u, altho i’m warning you that quite poorly atm.’

‘Are you ill? I don’t want to inconvenience you!’

Phil bit his lip, tugging on his lip piercing with worry. He really needed help cramming, or at least the textbook to look over, but the last thing he wanted was to make a sick Dan get out of bed and meet him in the cold, miserable library just because Phil was a bad Astronomy student - hell, a bad student in general.

‘dw it’s not an inconvenience! but if you’re near west campus u could come to my dorm? if you want to risk getting my cold haha’

His dorm? Phil was surprised – they were casual classmates, maybe venturing into friend territory, but he definitely didn’t think they were on an invite-each-other-over basis yet. Then again, Phil was probably over thinking things as usual. And desperate times called for desperate measures.

‘Are you sure?? I really don’t want to be a bother.’

A second later, the reply came:

‘don’t be silly. watson hall, wait by the north exit i’ll let u in’

Phil scrambled his belongings together and started to make his way out of the library and across campus to the residence. It had begun drizzling, so Phil put his hood on and kept his head down as he walked against the rain. He felt the familiar feeling of butterflies that was a common occurrence whenever Dan was in the equation. He had never quite felt like this before - he liked people, in theory, had had a few partners, but he always ended up liking the idea of being with them more than the reality. He had gotten nervous butterflies before, but it was different with Dan - with Dan he felt excitement. There was a fair share of anxiety mixed in, worrying as he always did about Dan not liking him, or misjudging him, or any number of other negative things. But Phil was just excited to learn about Dan, plain and simple. There was so much more to him than met the eye: just last week Dan had been talking about how he hated most of the people in their class, and not five minutes later he started tearing up when their professor mentioned the children’s book _Goodnight Moon_. He was like no one Phil had ever met before; he was just as mysterious and elusive as the universe they were learning about, and yet just as comforting and familiar.

As he got closer to Watson Hall, he tried to imagine Dan living in a dorm. Somehow he’d always pictured Dan just drifting off on a cloud after class – at the very least, he couldn’t imagine him in the grimy, cramped dorms, the horrors of which he had heard of but never personally experienced. As he approached the dull, run-down residence building, he was confronted with the reality with Dan did, in fact, live in one of these prisons.

Phil almost stopped in his tracks when he looked up from the rainy ground and saw Dan leaning against the entrance door. He was wearing a snug, thick white hoodie with an image of the moon printed across it, with a loose pair of shorts that appeared to be made out of sweatpants material, and – Phil’s brain stuttered – knee high socks. Honest to God knee highs. They fit his calves perfectly and showed off his shapely thighs in a way that 1998 Britney Spears could never hope to achieve. Since it was late February and the class had started in January, he hadn’t seen Dan in anything other than skinny jeans (and light gray sweatpants on a few occasions), and the sight of his long, slightly curvy legs made Phil’s breath catch in his throat. He managed to tear his eyes away from Dan’s legs before he reached the door, hoping that Dan didn’t notice his pink cheeks.

“Hey,” Dan croaked out, clearly sick. His curly hair was much more dishevelled and bush-like than its normal coif, and his skin was a shade paler and greener than usual. Still, Phil thought, even sounding like a dying goose he still looks beautiful.

“Hey Dan,” Phil started, pulling the hood off his head and fixing his fringe. “You look really sick, are you sure you don’t mind…?”

“Mostly I’m just freezing from standing out here in these shorts,” he said, motioning for Phil to come inside the building. Phil followed him into the building and down the hall, trying to stare at anything but Dan’s ass, until they stopped only about 10 or so doors down.

“First floor?” Phil said, “That’s lucky.”

“Ugh, I hate it,” Dan replied, making a face while pushing open the door.

“My apartment has about a thousand stairs, so, trust me, you’re lucky,” Phil said. “I never want to climb another goddamned stair in my life.”

“Yeah, but look at my view! It’s awful,” Dan said as they stepped inside the room. Phil glanced at the window and briefly registered that there was a rather unsightly parking lot mostly obscured by a large bush. His attention, however, was drawn toward the right side of the room. Instead of the usual bare concrete walls with one or two lame posters tacked on, Dan had transformed his side of the room into some sort of ethereal aesthetic wonderland. His bed was a cozy explosion of pastel comfort, with more than a few stuffed animals littered across it, and a blue, lilac, and pink mandala tapestry hung above his headboard. On the wall above the side of his bed was an overwhelming collage of various artwork and pictures: polaroids of Dan and his friends, Wirrow art, an enormous poster of FKA Twigs, a painting of an anatomical heart, and a handwritten letter were just some of the things that caught Phil’s eye. His desk was neat and orderly, everything perfectly symmetrical with fairy lights outlining it all and his laptop placed neatly in the middle. Phil noticed, with appreciation, a copy of the Radiohead art book on top of a pile of textbooks. His side of the room was such a stark contrast to his roommate’s, which was so barren that Phil wondered if he even had a roommate at all.

Dan must have noticed Phil looking over to the empty side of the room and said, “Oh, don’t worry he went home for the weekend. I think he was afraid of catching my plague.” Dan sat down – or rather, sank down – into his bed. Phil slid off his dripping backpack and jacket and placed them by the door before sitting in the chair at the desk.

“Your room’s nice,” he offered.

“Thanks,” Dan replied. “I always think I’ve gotten used to how small it is, then I go somewhere that isn’t reminiscent of a prison and I’m back to square one.”

Phil chuckled. “At least you don’t have to commute. That is another kind of hell entirely.”

“Yeah, that’s true. This isn’t so bad. It is nice to be on my own, away from my parents, I mean. But I can’t wait to move into a flat next year.”

“It’s definitely a lot nicer. Having a shower that isn’t being shared by a dozen other people is preferable.”

Dan groaned and tossed his head back, and Phil quickly looked away from his exposed neck, feeling the blush return to his cheeks. “Phil, I’m dying. I can’t remember what privacy feels like.”

Phil cleared his throat before responding, “You’re almost near the end of the year, don’t worry. It’ll be final exams before we know it.”

“Exams!” Dan exclaimed, “The reason you’re here. Right. Let’s get down to it, shall we?” He leaned over to open the infamous textbook, the Cosmic Perspective, that was sitting neatly at the edge of the bed. “Hey, do you mind if I put on some music? I always study better when I’m listening to something.”

“Sure,” Phil replied. “I usually listen to music as well.” He picked up Dan’s laptop off of the desk in front of him and passed it over.

While Dan fiddled around with his laptop, Phil took a moment to take in the present. He was sitting in Dan’s room, a room that was so...well, Dan, in every way. Dan carried a special presence with him wherever he went, with his loud appearance and even louder voice. But being in his room was something else entirely. He couldn’t try to distract himself by looking at other people in the room or listening to the professor, because it was just them. It was just him and Dan and everything that Dan was in a tiny dorm room and Phil had trouble believing that this was really happening.

Finally, Dan brought Phil out of his reverie by playing a song. As soon as the first note played, that haunting piano chord, he recognized what it was.

“Pyramid Song? You like Radiohead?” Phil said.

“Yeah, they’re arguably my favourite band in the world,” Dan answered. “Is this alright? I can put something else on.”

“No, I love this song. The melody is so simple, but really…hypnotic would be the best word probably.”

“Yeah, that’s a good word for it. It’s so beautiful,” Dan said. “I’d love to learn it on the piano one day, but I don’t have my keyboard with me.”

“You play piano?” Phil asked. Inwardly, he wondered if there was anything Dan didn’t do. He had far too many talents for one person.

“Yes, but not well. I don’t know any of the proper notes or anything, I just learn songs by ear. It’s awful, really.”

“Well, despite that, I’d love to hear you play someday.”

“We’ll see about that,” Dan chuckled. “I’m not exaggerating, I’m really horrendous.”

Phil shook his head. If their previous conversations were anything to go by, Dan was full of it. Far too many times he had professed to be terrible at something, only to turn around and prove that he was above averagely good. Phil suspected this was no different.

They were silent as the first verse started, and a few lines in Phil realized that Dan had begun to sing along, quietly and softly under his breath. “And we all went to heaven in a little row boat, there was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt.” Dan, realizing that Phil was listening intently to him, blushed and cleared his throat. “Sorry, um, I get carried away sometimes.”

“No, it’s fine.” Phil noticed that Dan’s eyes were suddenly glassy. It could be from his illness, but somehow Phil didn’t think so. He usually focused on the melody of a song and this was the first time he’d really thought about the lyrics. They were incredibly poignant and he wouldn’t be surprised if Dan was tearing up because of them. He couldn’t help but wonder if Dan had ever felt what Thom Yorke was singing about - about dying, about death not being something scary but almost a comforting thing, something bigger than just one person and something that connects you with the universe. He was probably overthinking it as usual, but people don’t listen to Radiohead without relating to at least some of the lyrics. In fact, he wondered if Radiohead had any fans that were actually happy. He doubted it. It made him wonder about Dan - he seemed so extroverted and passionate, but there was definitely something else beneath all that. It made Phil want to know what that was.

“Let’s get started, shall we?” Dan said, interrupting Phil’s thoughts.

“Right, sorry, of course.”

They ended up studying together until well into the night. It turns out that although Dan was an avid learner, he was not the best student. His notes were a mess, a sprawling tangent of what interested him rather than what mattered for the test, and his textbook was either completely blank or almost entirely highlighted as he tended to only read the passages that peaked his interest. When Phil scolded him for his notetaking and highlighting skills, Dan whined, “I can’t help it, it’s all interesting!” Phil, on the other hand, found none of it interesting, but had learned a thing or two about how to study effectively in the past few years. They spent the day in a back and forth between Phil teaching Dan how to locate the important information and giving him some memorization techniques, and Dan gushing enthusiastically about the topic whenever Phil’s motivation flagged. Dan’s eyes would suddenly light up when he saw a phrase like “string theory,” and he would rant about it for fifteen minutes, having obtained the information from what he called his “3 a.m. Wikipedia Odysseys.”

Phil’s attention was fleeting at best during these rants, and often wandered to Dan’s body language while he was speaking passionately on a topic. His hands would flail wildly, mimicking his words – clutching his chest, opening wide, making a fist. His hands had a language of their own and Phil wanted to learn it. Dan would often get frustrated if he didn’t think he was articulating himself well enough, huffing in frustration before trying to redo an explanation, asking Phil repeatedly “you know what I mean?” to which Phil nodded, not knowing what Dan meant. Even though Phil didn’t really care about whatever Dan was waffling on about, the way Dan spoke made Phil want to care.

At around 9:30, Phil glanced outside and noticed with a sinking feeling that it was pitch black outside. His stomach still felt light and bubbly from being with Dan for so long, but his head was pounding with equations for light years and minute details about each planet’s rock or gas formation. The last thing he wanted to do was walk home in the freezing rain through a dark and abandoned campus.

“I should get going,” he finally said with a sigh.

Dan, pulled out of his trance of typing up bullet points about UV rays, looked up suddenly and checked the time on his phone. “Ohmygod, I completely lost track of time. And I’ve just realized that I’m absolutely starving.”

Phil felt his stomach grumble at that exact moment, “Same. I would literally kill a man for a pizza right now.”

Dan laughed. “Okay, well you don’t have to murder me, but we could go get a pizza? There’s a place that’s open 24 hours about ten minutes away. Plus, you wouldn’t have to walk alone in the dark. At least, not the whole way.”

“Are you feeling okay to go out though?” Phil asked. Dan had chugged about three mugs of lemon tea throughout the day, and looked moderately better than he had earlier that afternoon. He still sounded quite goosey, though.

“Yes, I shall persevere through my ailment. Now that I’m thinking about it, nothing will stop me in my quest for pizza,” Dan said with parodic bravado. Phil suspected he might have had a bit of a case of man flu, and gratefully agreed to go out for food. He gathered up his belongings that had become scattered across Dan’s room over the course of the afternoon, then went outside to wait while Dan changed into warmer clothes. He tried, and failed, not to think of him changing with only a few feet and a slab of wood between them.

As they walked through the biting cold rain across the unbearably dull and grey campus, Dan shivered and huddled closer into his jacket, like a turtle trying to retreat into his shell. They had left the residence in good spirits but a minute in and Dan had fallen silent, determinedly staring at the ground. “You alright?” Phil asked.

“Yeah, it’s just...a bit embarrassing,” he replied, and took a deep breath. “I don’t like the dark. Like, at all.”

“You’re afraid of the dark? Really? Well, that’s good we went out in the night time then,” Phil replied. Dan laughed weakly but Phil saw out of the corner of his eye that he was looking around shakily. Wanting to make him feel better, Phil instinctively said: “Let’s look at the stars, that’ll calm you down.” They both stopped walking at looked up at the night sky – which was completely obscured by clouds.

“Oh,” Phil said, laughing a bit. Dan made no response and shifted uncomfortably back and forth on his feet. He longed to put his arm around him and hold him tight. Instead, he looked towards the ground. As he did, a small white flower caught his eye in the midst of all the grey. He stooped down and plucked it, muttering under his breath: “It’ll die in the frost anyway.” He stood up and turned to face Dan, who was looking quizzically at him. Phil, emboldened by the enveloping darkness and the comfort of having spent all day with Dan, softly reached out towards Dan, tucked a curl behind his ear, and placed the flower there. “I think it’d rather spend its last moments here than alone in the cold.”

In spite of the darkness, Phil could tell that Dan had gone bright red and a smile was tugging the edge of his lips.

“Sorry,” Phil said. “Was that really lame?”

“No,” Dan mumbled. Phil could barely hear him and only caught a few words. “...nice...thank you.”

Phil was elated, and decided that they needed to get a move on before he did something really stupid - like kiss him or, God forbid, express any feelings. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go before we freeze to death. Or starve to death. I don’t know which would be worse.”

“Starving, for sure,” Dan said, his voice a slightly higher volume than before. “I have terrible circulation so I’m always cold, I’m used to it. But I can’t go an hour without food, no matter how much I want to.”

“Yeah,” Phil smiled. “You’re right. Death by hypothermia is definitely the way to go.”

They continued walking the short distance to the pizza shop, and Phil noticed that Dan’s step had lightened and he was quietly humming under his breath.

***

Later that night, as Phil lay in bed, he felt sure he wouldn’t do well on the exam, despite studying all day. At the pizza shop, he and Dan had quickly wolfed down their pizzas and spent another hour or so chatting about everything and nothing; in that one short hour, everything he crammed all day completely fled from his mind, to be replaced by one thought and one thought only: Dan.

It was odd: whenever he was away from Dan he felt confused and worried about their relationship. He wondered if the age gap was too large and if he was being a creepy senior who couldn’t let go of their youth. In fact, sometimes he felt more like a senior citizen than a senior student. He’d just read Shakespeare’s _Venus and Adonis_ and couldn’t help but feeling that he was the predatory, older Venus and Dan was the sprightly, young Adonis. What did it say about him that his closest friend and crush was four years younger?

And it wasn’t only the age difference that bothered him. He picked over every word he had said to Dan, kicking himself for saying too much and sounding too dorky, or not saying enough and being too quiet. He felt like everything he did was wrong and annoying, and that Dan secretly hated him and was just too polite to confront him about it. He felt this way with everyone, needing to impress everyone and to have everyone like him, yet always feeling like everything he did and said made people hate him. He just felt essentially flawed as a person. But this feeling was especially awful when it came to Dan. He so desperately wanted Dan to like him, romantically, of course, but even just platonically, that he analyzed everything that happened between them until he was convinced Dan hated his guts. Every night after these ruminations, Phil would decide that he’d ease off of the relationship, so that Dan could just let it die naturally. He expected that Dan would instantly sever contact once Phil stopped pestering him.

Above it all, Phil was convinced in his core that no one would ever fully love him, all of him. He was Phil Lester, the Weird Kid, the person that people would occasionally hook up but inevitably lose interest in when he didn’t meet their expectations. And he’d never met anyone before that was worth the trouble of confronting this fear. He simply wasn’t made to be in love. He didn’t even think that he was made to be liked.

But Dan kept proving him wrong. No matter what Phil’s brain had convinced him of, Dan would always text him back, always call him over to his seat in class. Against what felt like all odds, Dan seemed to actually like Phil. And when they were together, Phil felt none of the uneasiness that would plague his nights. Phil normally dreaded studying, but the hours had gone by so quickly and happily while he was with Dan. It felt entirely natural being with him: there was no fear and no doubt.


	3. A Million Miles Away

“Shit!” Phil yelled, as GAME OVER flashed on his screen for the third time in a row. He had a week off from classes and had just started playing _The Witcher 3_ in order to distract himself from the mountain of books and essays that he hadn’t started reading or writing yet. However, much to Phil’s chagrin, the game was stressing him out almost as much as his neglected schoolwork. He had led Geralt, the main character, into an area that was far too difficult for his current three measly levels. He started the game back up only to be devoured _again_ by a pack of monsters called ghouls. He was just about to ragequit when his phone buzzed; his stomach did a little flip when he saw that it was Dan.

‘hey r u busy?’

‘not unless you count getting rekt at the witcher 3 busy :P’

‘ok that’s my favourite game and we have to talk about that another time. but rn i sorta need someone to talk 2. do u have skype?’

Phil’s eyes widened as he read the last text. This sounded pretty serious and was a far cry from the last text Dan had sent him last night which read ‘gn u dork.’ He knew that Dan was staying at his parent’s house for the week-long break and he wondered if something had happened with his family. He’d hinted before that he had a tumultuous relationship with them, but he didn’t know the full extent of it.

‘yeah it’s phillester, i’ll be ready in about 5 mins’

‘ok. thank you.’

As soon as he read the reply, he jumped off his couch and ran into his bedroom, pulling off his stained t-shirt as he went. He threw on a clean blue shirt and tried to sort his hair in the mirror beside his closet. He hadn’t straightened it as he normally did and it was far too messy for his liking, but it would have to do. He raced back into his living room and tried to shove all the junk that accumulated on his couch onto the floor. He hadn’t cleaned properly since winter break and there were at least four layers of assorted crap that he needed to get out of view. Finally, he sat down on his deceptively clean couch and opened Photobooth up on his laptop. He put a few pillows on his lap so that there was a better, less double-chin intense angle. After asserting that he didn’t look too horrendous, he took a deep breath and opened up Skype to find a new contact request. He pressed ‘accept’ and then the ‘video call’ button.

Dan answered the call and appeared on Phil’s screen. He was in a baggy black long-sleeved shirt with his hair unkempt, but he still looked gorgeous.

“Hey,” Phil said, doing his best to look as though he hadn’t just been running around his apartment in an attempt to look presentable.

“Hi,” Dan said meekly, his voice cracking. Phil’s senses were suddenly alert. It was difficult to tell through the shitty webcam quality, but Dan looked as though he had been crying, and he was clearly upset.

“Oh, hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, concerned. He’d seen Dan cry a few times before over little things - Dan was an emotional guy and cried quite a lot - but he’d never seen him properly upset before.

“Sorry, I feel really silly now. You were just the first safe person I thought of,” Dan said, wiping his eyes and cheeks with the sleeves of his sweater.

“You’re not silly. I promise I won’t laugh or anything.”

Dan took a big breath. “It’s just being back here. It’s awful. It was the same the last time I was here and I shouldn’t’ve expected it to be any different. But I did and it’s so, so terrible and I don’t know what to do. I just had a huge fight with my dad and I feel like I’m 15 again, like a stupid angsty teenager. I’m 18, I’ve moved out, I’m an adult now and I shouldn’t feel like this. But he started screaming at me about some dishes that I hadn’t cleaned, as if I haven’t been living on my own for almost a year. I went into my room, slammed the door, and started listening to music. _Nothing’s changed._ I went to uni to get away from everything and have a fresh start, but the second I walk in the door all my progress is just...gone. I don’t - I don’t know what to do to make it different, better.” He started crying again and hid his face in his hands.

Phil was taken aback. He had no idea what to say. He had a good relationship with his family and always looked forward to going back home, to the home-cooked meals and the laundry done for him and the extra affection. He’d never want to move back there, he could see how it would become suffocating, but he had never felt anything like what Dan was feeling. So he said the only thing he could think of saying:

“Dan, I’m so, so sorry.”

Dan looked up from his behind his hands and quietly said, “Thanks.”

“No, really. I would take you away from there in an instant if I could. I’m tempted to drive down there right now and get you out of that house.”

Dan laughed through his tears. Phil continued:

“Of course, I don’t have a car, so I’d have to steal one. And traffic will be really bad right now so it’d take me a few hours. Plus the time that I’d be in the hospital since I’m a terrible driver and will definitely get in an accident. So I should get to you by the end of the week.”

Dan was laughing in earnest now. “Ohmygod, I’m so happy I messaged you. I didn’t think I could laugh while still in this house.”

“Happy to be of service.” Phil smiled.

“Ugh, I’m really embarrassed now,” Dan said. “I’m so fucking dramatic. It’s really not a big deal, it’s the same shit I’ve always dealt with just...I’m tired of having to deal with the same shitty emotions over and over again.” He sighed, and continued, “I wish you were actually here. Just, you know, so I’d have someone around who doesn’t start every sentence with ‘What is wrong with you.’ You feel so far away.”

“I wish I was there too. Thank God we live in the 21st century and there’s the Internet. And, we’re not so far away really. A few hundred miles maybe?”

“That might as well be a million miles.”

“Does it really feel like a that?”

“Well, no,” Dan answered. “Not at the minute. It did before I called you though.” He paused briefly. “It kinda feels like we’re both a million miles away from anything now, doesn’t it? Like, I sorta forgot that I was in this shit house.”

“Yeah, it kinda does,” Phil laughed, realizing that he also hadn’t thought about his disastrously messy apartment or even his appearance for the length of the call. “It would be cool if we could actually be a million miles away from everything. Like on the moon or something.”

“Phil, the moon is only like two hundred thousand miles from the earth. A million miles would be like, I don’t know, a fraction of the way to Mars. You really don’t pay attention in class do you?”

“No,” Phil chuckled. “No, I definitely do not.”

“Hey, I’m sorry I bothered you with all this. You were probably enjoying your break or getting stuff done -”

“Dan, don’t worry about it. I was literally just sitting here playing video games all day. I really don’t mind. I just wish there was something more I could do for you.”

“There’s nothing else you can do, really. This helped though, it really did. I was trying to get over it on my own, but crying along to Thom Yorke just wasn’t cutting it.”

“Thom Yorke, really? Which song?”

“Song, singular? Phil, my crying does not last one song. I had _In Rainbows_ on repeat."

Phil laughed softly. “So is that your go-to sad music then?”

“Pretty much,” Dan answered. “I have a sad playlist, but then I have a Sad playlist, with a capital ‘S.’ It’s mostly just Radiohead.”

“Why do you like them so much?” Phil asked. “That came out wrong, sorry. I’m honestly just curious.” Phil knew Dan was reluctant to reveal personal stuff about himself unless in the exact right mood, and whenever he asked questions like this, they were usually deflected with humour. However, Dan must have been in the right mood, because he started to answer.

“It’s hard to explain but I’ve thought about it a lot - like, why they’re my favourite band. Their music just...makes the world feel a little softer and more clear, I guess. Like, the music is so soothing and complex and gives you something to focus on without being too overwhelming. And the lyrics - Thom Yorke just gets what I want to say, you know? He understands everything that I think and feel about the world that I don’t have the words for. Or, I have the words for them, but they’re all jumbled and stuck in my throat and it hurts to try to get them out. But when I listen to Thom’s lyrics, it’s like he pulled the words out of me and arranged them perfectly and set it to beautiful music. And everything in my head is just _calm_ for once because someone _gets it_ , someone understands like...my essential beliefs about the world. What it is to be a human and all that. I don’t know if I’m articulating this right... It just feels like their music is explaining and soothing a part of my soul that feels too raw and jagged to be expressed.”

Phil sat there, absolutely dazed by Dan - that he could open up so beautifully about music and that he was opening up to _Phil_. He had heard Dan make these kinds of speeches before, but never about something so clearly personal and vulnerable. Dan had clearly thought about this before, but it was fairly obvious that he’d never spoken about it aloud. Phil felt so touched that Dan was bearing this small part of his soul to him and he had no idea how to respond.

Phil’s contemplating led him to be silent for a moment too long and Dan laughed with embarrassment. He finished his monologue with a dismissive: “Can you tell that I had an emo phase as a preteen?”

“Dan, honestly,” Phil said. “You could be a music reviewer, or a radio DJ or something.” Phil had no idea what to respond to a lengthy speech about how much Dan loved Radiohead, but he felt it was something along those lines. He’d never really felt that emotional about music before, and he was starting to wonder if Dan just felt everything ten times more than the normal human.

“Thanks,” Dan said, with a little sigh of what Phil guessed was relief at not being laughed at. “I would love a job where I could just talk about Radiohead all the time. I mean, I might as well get paid for it. But I’m never going to get a job that interesting or cool.”

“Dan, I’m serious. That was better than any Rolling Stone review I’ve ever read."

“Phil, _I’m_ serious. Don’t get my hopes up. I’m gonna end up stuck in some boring office job where I end up focusing more on not killing myself with various objects around the office than the actual work itself.”

“So, like, death by stapler? I don’t know, that sounds like a pretty cool way to go out,” Phil laughed. “Honestly, though, don’t do that to yourself. Office jobs are horrendous. Maybe for some people they’re okay, but a stapler ‘accident’ sounds much preferable to working a 9-5.”

“You’re telling me. But the thought of having a job that’s unpredictable or something I couldn’t plan scares the hell out of me. I don’t want an office job. Or any other job that I’m not passionate about. But I can plan for those jobs. I can’t plan to be a radio dj or whatever.”

“Sometimes you can’t plan things though. Usually the best things in life are unplanned,” Phil said, thinking about how he ended up meeting Dan.

“Phil,” Dan said, seriously. “If I knew I was dying tomorrow, I wouldn’t be upset about it. I’d just want to plan my funeral. I can and will plan absolutely everything in my life and anything outside of that is a hellish nightmare that I want no part of.”

“You’re so dramatic! Honestly though, if a boring job would somehow result in that overly planned funeral, don’t do a boring job. There’s nothing forcing you to do it.”

“Yeah, you’re right, there’s only, you know, the overwhelming pressure from my family, the crippling reality of capitalism, the fact that I’d rather not live on the streets-”

“Okay, okay, I get it! It’s just, you have so much potential, you could do anything. You could join the circus, nothing’s stopping you.”

“Phil, what on earth would I do in the circus?”

“I don’t know - one of those people that just stands on top of the elephants?”

“That’s animal cruelty, Phil. I’ll have no part in the torture of those elephants.”

“Okay, what about juggling? I can juggle you know, I could teach you. Or one of those people that jumps through those hoops that are on fire. And I could be a magician! I’ve always wanted to do magic.”

“Alright, so you’ll be the magician. And I’ll be the guy who is constantly on fire because I don’t have the coordination to jump through a hoop, let alone one that’s on fire."

“No, you’ll practice and you’ll be incredible. You will be the Dan That Is Not On Fire. And I’ll be the Amazing Phil!”

Dan shook his head. “You are so ridiculous."

“You love it.”

“I don’t. I hate it.”

“Then why are you laughing? C’mon, say you love it.

 _Say you love me,_ Phil wanted to say, but held his tongue.

“Alright, I love it.”

***

By the time they finally said goodbye and ended the Skype call, three hours had gone by. They Skyped every day that week and it was, according to Dan, the ‘only thing that kept him somewhat sane.’ The Skyping continued throughout the semester, even when Dan returned to campus, a mere 30 minute bus ride from Phil’s apartment. By the end of April, they had a record Skype call of 5 hours and 42 minutes.


	4. Our Universe

“Can I drink it now?” Phil looked longingly at his iced coffee sitting on the café’s flimsy outdoor table.

“Just a second…” Dan reached out and shifted his caramel frappuccino, snapping another shot of the two drinks sweating in the sun. He was far too concentrated on getting the _perfect shot_ , but Phil didn’t really mind because Dan happened to look incredibly cute while he was concentrating. His brow was furrowed and he was entirely still, a rare occurrence for the ever-moving boy. Though it was 8 p.m., the sun was just beginning to set (something Phil was somehow always surprised by, despite this happening every year when Spring rolled around). The soft sunlight cascaded across Dan, illuminating him in a hundred shades of gold. Everything about him was so _warm._ His eyes, normally nearly indistinguishable from black, were an amber brown and his skin was already getting darker (he had been a worrying pale shade until about a week ago when his exams ended). Paired with his outfit, a loose white crop top with a constellation, light grey high waisted jean shorts, purple doc martens, glittery nail polish, and sheer pink lipstick, Dan was the embodiment of a warm spring day. The clichéd picture he was taking simply completed the quintessential look.

Phil’s phone buzzed and he opened the snapchat that Dan had just sent him (yes, Phil had gotten snapchat after Dan had begged him). The picture made their melting drinks look so wonderfully aesthetic, with emojis plastered all over it and a caption that read “gonna get caffed off our tits before tonite.”

Phil laughed, “What does that even mean?”

“You know, like we’re about to consume enough caffeine to kill a small child so that we can stay up all night?” Dan answered, taking a sip of his frap.

“Yeah, I understood the general sentiment you dork. But I’ll have you know that my extremely manly pecs are definitely _not_ tits. And caffed? I mean, you know fraps have almost no caffeine, right?”

“I hardly ever drink coffee though, this’ll go straight into my bloodstream. You on the other hand? You could probably inject it straight into your heart and not be affected with how much coffee you drink,” Dan said.

Phil laughed, loving how much Dan already knew about him in only four months of knowing each other. “I don’t drink that much! 3, 4 cups a day…” Upon seeing Dan’s incredulous look, he added, “Hey, come back to me in your last year of uni. You’ll see, you’ll be chugging it by the bucket as well.”

Dan laughed, “Maybe.” He looked down into his drink, his smile fading slowly. “So, um, speaking of the future, have you thought about what you’ll do next year?”

Phil sighed heavily. God knows that he had been bombarded with this question often enough lately. Most people seemed to consider it polite small talk, though it was similar to asking a first-year poli-sci student what they thought of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or casually asking the Pope about his thoughts on religion. _Of course_ he’d thought about it - it was pretty much all he could think about about. But the real issue here was if Dan was just asking for the sake of asking, because it was what you were supposed to do when someone was graduating, or if he really cared?

He tried to push these thoughts away before answering. “Um, well I’m not quite sure yet. My parents are encouraging me to find a job, but I actually applied to do a Master’s degree here. I was accepted, but I’m not sure though. I haven’t officially accepted their offer yet.” Phil couldn’t help but notice that Dan looked up quickly, the smile rapidly returning to his face.

“You definitely should!” He seemed to catch himself being overeager. “I mean, you might as well delay the horrific job market, right? Plus, most jobs nowadays require a Master’s degree.” He trailed off, but Phil interrupted him, smiling. “Yeah, I’ll probably end up accepting.”

They passed a moment in quiet, charged silence. Phil, for the first time in a long time, since he’d moved away from home probably, felt content. It was a beautiful evening in late April, a balmy and unseasonal 17 degrees, the sun was still out, and birds were singing on the newly green trees. He was sat here with the most interesting, beautiful boy he’d ever met, who he was about to go _stargazing_ with, for Christ’s sake.

Phil remembered when his professor had emailed them a week after the final exam, inviting them to stargaze at the Astronomy department to celebrate a semester’s worth of knowledge. He’d immediately deleted the email, but soon after received about a half dozen texts from Dan begging him to go with him. Phil’s social nervousness was screaming at him not to, to tell Dan to go alone, that they’d be the only ones there, it would be awkward, etc., but when he saw just how excited Dan was, he couldn’t say no. He had reluctantly agreed and here they were. Phil didn’t regret a thing.

The tense silence lessened under Phil’s fond reminiscence, and they returned to casually chatting away for the better part of an hour. They didn’t have to be at the event until 10:30, but the sun had gone down and Phil noticed Dan shivering. He looked adorable in the thin crop top, but clearly his exposed skin was suffering. Phil worried about him being too cold, especially since they were going to be outside all night. Remembering that he had planned to go back to his apartment anyway, he asked Dan:

“Hey do you mind if we stop by my apartment quickly? I forgot to charge my phone. It’s only a block away.”

“Yeah, sure, we have loads of time anyway,” Dan replied.

***

Phil cringed as he opened the door to his apartment – he had forgotten how messy it was. It was a tiny apartment which was essentially the attic of a three-story townhouse, with a slanted roof that made the place seem even smaller. Phil liked it well enough – it was all he could afford on a student budget, he didn’t need much space, and he liked the coziness of it. However, the small quarters had the effect of making his natural messiness seem even more catastrophic. Paired with his abundance of nerdy memorabilia and his obsession with houseplants, walking into his apartment was akin to entering a warzone where the collateral damage took the form of kitschy décor and greenery.

“Wow, it’s like walking into a jungle,” Dan said as Phil let him through the door. “You really like houseplants, don’t you?”

“I may have a _slight_ obsession,” Phil replied, closing the door behind Dan. “It started out with one just to brighten up the place, and the next thing I knew…”

“You found yourself the adoptive father of an entire forest?” Dan offered.

Phil laughed. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“It’s nice though. I didn’t expect your place to be so…bright.”

“Why, because of how I dress?”

Dan nodded as he looked around the room. “I must admit I expected a bit more black. And less plants.”

Phil leant against the counter and considered how to answer. He got a lot of questions about why he dressed the way he did, because it didn’t necessarily match his personality. “I like dressing like this, but it’s…not really my identity, you know? I mean, I don’t tie my personality to my clothes as much as other people do, I guess. I’ve always dressed like this, like the black and the piercings and stuff, since I was a teenager at least. I don’t really see it as dressing a certain way, you know? I just put on the stuff that I feel good in. People get the wrong idea a lot but I’ve never really been bothered by what people think of me.” _Also, a part of me likes that it makes me seem unapproachable,_ Phil thought to himself, though he’d never admit it to Dan. He’d realized in the past year or so that he, both subconsciously and consciously, tried to appear aloof and detached so that strangers wouldn’t approach him. But that was for an inevitable therapy session in the future and definitely not for casually discussing in front of your crush. Plus, Dan didn’t seem put off by his appearance, which was all that mattered.

Phil offered Dan a glass of water as they sat at his tiny two-seater kitchen table. A thin slant of light from the setting sun through the kitchen window fell across Dan’s hands as he gripped the glass of water. Phil couldn’t take his eyes off of him. He could hardly believe that Dan was sitting here, _in his apartment,_ and had to reluctantly drag his eyes away when Dan started speaking.

“I know exactly what you mean,” Dan said. “People always assume I’m, like, really peppy and bubbly because of how I dress, but as you may have been able to discern, I’m not really like that at all. Oh, and they always assume I’m gay. I mean, I’m definitely not straight, so they’re right on that account.”

Phil had known that Dan wasn’t straight, naturally. They had both guessed that the other wasn’t straight and confirmed this a few weeks into their friendship whilst arguing over whether or not their prof was hot, of all things. Regardless, it was still relieving to have Dan verbally confirm it again. Phil had had one too many crushes on straight boys not to be a little weary.

“People assuming that you’re straight is the worst thing ever,” Phil said. “I mean, it’s not really anybody’s business in my opinion, but it just feels so obvious to me? Like, that’s me, Phil The Not-Straight Guy, and it always weirds me out a bit that other people can’t immediately see that.”

Dan laughed. “Right?! God, you get me. People are always trying to slap labels on me. I’m with a boy, I’m gay. I’m with a girl, I’m straight. And God forbid I dated someone who wasn’t a girl or boy, people wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with me then. Like, enough. Let me live.”

“Careful, Howell,” Phil laughed. “You’re starting to sound dangerously like a 2008 MySpace ‘labels are for soup cans’ sticker.”

“Hey!” Dan shouted with faux-indignance. He then scrunched up his eyes and opened his mouth wide in a phony smile. He opened one of his eyes slightly and peeked up at Phil. “I’m doing the XD face if you can’t tell.”

“Is that what that is? I was about to escape out my window and risk the three-story drop.”

He sounded casual, but Phil’s heart was in his throat. Worried that an admittance of his crush was right on the tip his tongue, he tried to search for a change of subject through the hazy happiness he felt. Suddenly, he remembered the reason they had come to their apartment and quickly stood up. “Hold on, let me find my charger, my phone needs some juice.”

Phil got up and went into his bedroom, quickly plugging his phone into the charger beside his bed. He sat down and tried to gather his thoughts. Not only had Phil convinced himself that Dan didn’t like him _that way,_ but Phil was terrified of ruining their friendship. He wanted so much more, but if Dan didn’t he’d lose the only true friendship he’d ever had. Also, in the past few weeks it had become clear that Dan was on a completely different plane from him. He had been so worried and nervous about the end of year exams, while Phil had barely cared at all and simply wanted to pass. He was getting excited to pick his major for next year and Phil was wondering if he had made a mistake with his major. Dan was full of possibility and hope. Phil was lost. Even if there was the slightest chance that Dan liked him, Phil had no idea what he was doing with his life and he didn’t want to drag anyone else into that.

Phil wasn’t sure of anything, except for Dan. He tried to bury the emerging feeling that he was falling in love and determined to hold onto Dan as a friend. He was Phil’s solid tether, pulling him back from the brink of drowning.

Phil realized he had spent far too long alone in his bedroom, so he pushed his tumultuous thoughts aside and walked up to his wardrobe. He picked his softest outerwear, a huge black hoodie, and with it in hand walked back out into the kitchen.

“What were you doing?” Dan asked hesitantly.

“Picking something for you to wear,” Phil half-lied. “Here, you’re going to be cold.”

“Thanks,” Dan said sheepishly. “I really didn’t think through this outfit this morning.”

“Well, it is fitting thematically, but perhaps not seasonally,” Phil said. “Although most of your clothes do carry some sort of space theme.”

“Yeah, I actually really hate…I’m sort of self-conscious about how I look. I figured out that if I cover my body in things that make me happy, it makes me sort of like myself?” Dan’s voice had gotten so quiet and hesitant that Phil wondered if he had ever spoken those thoughts aloud. From the mildly horrified look on his face, Phil guessed he hadn’t. “That’s probably really lame.”

“It’s not lame at all,” Phil said. “That’s part of the reason why I have so many tattoos. It’s just – I’m surprised you’re self-conscious, is all. It doesn’t show at all.”

“Really? That’s relieving. And surprising, to be honest. I mean, how could I not be self-conscious? I’m chubby and I have hair that looks like a hobbit.”

“Hey, I happen to love hobbits,” Phil said teasingly, before realizing that he was dangerously approaching that feelings territory again. Dan blushed.

Phil looked down at his phone to avoid eye contact and realized that it was 9:25. “Hey, we have a while ‘til we have to go, d’you wanna play something?”

***

They played about half a dozen rounds of Mario Kart and Phil learned that Dan was not only a sore loser, but a sore winner as well. After Dan crushed Phil and added insult to injury by finishing the game by moving the controller around on his _face,_ Phil decided to call it quits. He dropped his own controller and stretched, hearing his back crack embarrassingly loud.

“We should get going,” he said.

They got up to put their jackets on and Phil went over to his bedroom to put his faux-leather jacket on. When he walked back out into the hall and saw Dan, his heart did a little flippy over thing. Dan was wearing his black hoodie, which was already big on Phil, but was huge on Dan. It went down to nearly his knees and the tips of his fingers just barely poked out through the scrunched up fabric. Phil had never seen anything cuter, and it was in _his_ hoodie of all things. Dan giggled. “It’s a little big.”

Phil swallowed, making sure his voice was steady before answering. “I can get you something else if you want.” Dan shook his head. “No, I like this. I’ll definitely be warm now, it’s like wearing a blanket.”

Phil felt the butterflies swarming in his stomach as he watched the hoodie-engulfed Dan walk down the stairs out of his apartment. This was going to be a long night.

***

When Dan and Phil arrived at the Astronomy building, all the students were already there. All five of them.

“Jeez, this is pretty pathetic,” Dan whispered to Phil as they entered the main room.

“Do you want to leave?” Phil asked.

“No, um, we might as well say hi to Professor Reid.”

They walked up to the small group of students surrounding the professor. Phil didn’t recognize any of them, as it was a large lecture and he’d only had eyes for one student all semester. The professor began explaining what they’d be doing that night: each student would take turns looking through the observatory, which was more or less a giant telescope, and identify the various astrological features they had studied throughout the year. Phil looked warily at Dan. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but more studying was not on his to-do list.

Dan caught Phil’s eye and turned back to the prof with his charm turned on. “Professor Reid, this is an incredible opportunity. We just expected something a little more…casual.”

The professor considered a moment. “I’ll tell you boys what: you’ve been good students. A little chatty, to be honest, but your enthusiasm has warmed these old bones.” Phil suspected that he was only referring to the both of them out of politeness, as it was Dan who had shown 100% of the enthusiasm. Phil wasn’t even sure if the prof knew his name.

The professor continued, “And I just happen to know that the roof has a pretty spectacular view, so I’ll let you two up there on two conditions: you don’t do anything dangerous, just sit there and observe, and that you return the keys to the roof to me _before midnight_. And, um, send me a report on your observations. Whether or not I actually check my email for that report is a little more...up in the air, shall we say. Got it?”

So Dan and Phil were escorted to the roof of the Astronomy building by the head of the department himself. Phil definitely felt like he was doing something rebellious and cool, even if the professor did part by wagging his finger and saying, “Now don’t make me regret this, boys.”

The rooftop was pretty impressive, for a rooftop of a university building. It was rather small, as it was a narrow building, but had a little bench and a patch of grass with a small but well-kept flower garden.

“This is so weird,” Dan commented. “I thought it’d just be like, cement.”

“I suppose in an Astronomy building people have to come up to look at the sky,” Phil replied.

“Yeah, but they have that gagillion dollar telescope observatory thing.”

“Good point. I have no idea then. Maybe they’re nostalgic for the time before our tuition payed for the gagillion dollar telescope observatory thing.”

Dan laughed, “Yeah that’s probably it.”

Phil started to walk over to the bench, but Dan headed towards the grass and went to lay down. He turned back to Phil and noticed his confusion. “What? We’re stargazing aren’t we? We have to do it properly, can’t do it from a bench.”

Phil shrugged and joined Dan on the grass. It was surprisingly not that uncomfortable on the lush grass, but all potential discomfort was forgotten as he stared up at the sky.

All semester he had been so focused on memorizing what elements the stars were made of, how far apart they were, and their different stages, that he had nearly forgotten how _beautiful_ they were. Scores of them pierced through the darkness of the sky and Phil’s breath was taken away. And in the middle of it all, the moon, ever constant in its lonely brightness.

“Do you know any of the constellations?” Dan asked, breaking Phil’s reverie. Phil turned to him for a moment before answering, his breath catching when he realized that the beauty of the night’s sky couldn’t compare to the boy beside him. The dim light outlined his soft features, showing his open wonderment as he stared upwards. Phil reluctantly looked back at the sky before answering.

“Yeah, but I’m pretty useless at finding them. Wait – that’s Orion’s belt right there,” he said pointing to the telltale bright row of three stars.

It took Dan a moment before he noticed it. “Oh, right. Yeah that’s the only one I can see too.”

“I don’t know how I feel about only being able to identify Orion’s belt, like not even the rest of Orion. That’s pretty sad.”

“Hey, I don’t know any of them either. What is Orion anyway, is it a person?”

“Yeah, a Greek myth actually. I learned about it in a classics class I took last year.”

“What’s the legend?” Dan asked, sounding genuinely interested, though Phil somehow doubted it.

“Do you really want to hear my version of the story? I can barely remember it, it’ll be very undramatic.”

Dan laughed, “Yes, I want to hear Phil’s undramatic version of the story. I’ll judge for myself, thank you very much.”

“Alright, you asked for it. So Artemis – warrior goddess, also sworn to be chaste. Except she fell in love with Orion. Artemis' brother, Apollo, he was convinced that Orion would ruin her chastity, even though they weren’t planning on having sex. And Apollo was, like, weirdly obsessed with his sister’s virginity. So one day, he noticed that Orion was swimming in a lake while Artemis was lounging on the shore and he thought of this awful plan. He flew down to Artemis and, knowing that she was incredibly competitive, taunted her about her archery skills, saying stuff like ‘you suck, I’m the best archer to ever exist,’ blah blah, stuff like that. Obviously Artemis argued back, ‘no way bro I’m the best.’ Apollo was like, ‘Okay, I bet you can’t hit that little black speck in the middle of the lake.’ Artemis whipped out her bow and, of course, hit the black speck. Apollo left, all like, hell yeah I just saved my sister’s virginity.”

“She killed Orion?” Dan interrupted, ever impatient.

“Yes, but the worst part is that she didn’t find out til hours later. His body washed up on the shore with an arrow in his skull, and she realized what she had done. She cast his body into the stars to immortalize him forever.”

Dan was quiet for a moment before speaking. “That’s awful. I feel weird looking at it now.”

“Yeah. The worst part for me is thinking about all those hours that she didn’t know. She killed the love of her life and was just relaxing on the beach while his lifeless body drifted closer and closer to her on the waves. And her reaction, realizing what she had done – realizing what her own brother had done… All for a hypothetical, you know, Apollo didn’t know that Orion would take her virginity, he just guessed and, _bam_ , their love ended, forever.”

“That’s...so sad.”

Phil looked over at Dan. If the moonlight wasn’t tricking his eyes, they were full of tears. Was Dan really choked up? Over something he had quickly learned months and months ago for an essay that he’d forgotten about until tonight?

“Are you okay?” Phil asked.

“Sorry,” Dan replied. “I just can’t imagine accidentally killing someone I loved that much. Like, I know it’s just a story, but we’re looking at him, you know? At Orion. How often do we actually get to see the people in stories? There he is,” Dan pointed up at the constellation, marked by the three bright stars in his belt. “You know, I used to think it was so dumb that humans looked up and said ‘that’s a dog’ or ‘that’s a man’ about stars literally billions and billions of miles apart. Like, kind of funny maybe, but still a bit juvenile. Like making shapes out of clouds that disappear seconds later. But now I think that’s actually kind of amazing?”

Phil thought about that before replying, “We made a whole beautiful, tragic story about a few points of light in the sky. I get it. I always sort of took those stories for granted, you know? People make up stories, that’s what we do. But it is sort of...romantic.”

“Wait, are you, Philip Lester, saying that you like Astronomy?”

Phil laughed lightly. “Maybe? Just the stories we’ve made around it. I still can’t get my head around the science-y stuff.”

“But Astronomy itself is a story, science is a story, if you think about it.”

“Yes, but science implies _fact_. We know that stories are made up. They’re inspired by reality, maybe, but no one goes, ‘Oh yeah there was an actual Orion and that’s his actual body.’ The science of Astronomy implies that we can understand it all if we research enough. But the universe itself...it’s too vast. All we have are theories, which are cool stories, but I don’t understand the need to prove everything all the time with math and whatnot. I’ll never understand it, humans in general will probably never fully understand it, so what’s the point in searching for a definitive truth?”

“You don’t ever think about it? Like, what’s the meaning of it all? Why are we the only known life forms in an infinite universe, and what’s the point of life and all that?”

“Yeah, sometimes. But it’s impossible to know so why dwell on it? Why, do you think about that a lot?”

“Yeah, I do. Literally all the time, my life is one existential crisis after another. How can it not be? The whole thing about being a rational human is that you question being a rational human. ‘I think, therefore I am’ and all that."

“So? What do you think?”

“I’m not sure. I _think_ there’s just…nothing. I’m not phrasing that right, but, you know, I don’t believe in God is what I’m trying to say. I don’t really think that there’s a big plan or a purpose or anything. Everything just _is._ That used to scare me, because I was raised Christian and realizing that God, the being that is supposed to love you and take care of you, isn’t there... yeah, that freaked me out. Me, the big planner, realizing that there is no ultimate plan to humanity? Terrifying. And it still scares me sometimes. I wish I could believe in some greater power that would keep me safe and all that. But I also like the idea that no one is watching me and judging me. We can do whatever we want, there’s no universal law that governs us. It’s freeing. And it’s honestly kind of rock and roll how blunt the universe is, you know? It doesn’t care about anything. All that’s out there is chunks of rocks gravitating around balls of gas. They don’t give a shit who I am. I’m in complete control of myself and my destiny and I think I’d rather have it be that way. I can live the way that I want and believe in the things that _I_ want to believe in, rather than some universal truth. I can focus on the things that give _my_ life meaning.”

Phil was silent for a few heartbeats. He finally spoke, “Like what? Do you believe in, I mean.”

“Mm, I don’t know. Things that…feel like they matter? You know that line from _Moulin Rouge_? ‘The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return’? Like, that’s really cheesy, but you know, stuff like that.”

Phil could tell by the moonlight that Dan was blushing deeply.

“I think I know what you mean,” Phil said, slowly. “But I think randomness and insignificance can have its own meaning as well. Like, stars and planets and galaxies are all coincidences, astrological events that took place because certain elements were at the right place at the right time. They weren’t planned or anything, but they have effects. The Earth just happened to be formed in a certain distance from the sun that could support life, and everything that we know is because of that random coincidence. I think humans are like that too, just on a smaller scale. I mean, we could have gone to any university, but we chose this one. I just happened to take the same class as you. And here we are. Us meeting was a coincidence, but it has meaning. And, who knows, maybe the entire universe was created just so we sit here and talk about it tonight.”

Dan laughed, but not without a degree of hesitation. “C’mon, do you really believe that?”

“It doesn’t logically make sense. But doesn’t it feel like it? Like everything was created just so we could be here together, like it’s our universe?”

“Yeah,” Dan breathed. “It does feel like that.”

They lay together, gazing up at the starry heavens, the moonlight highlighting their bodies on the grass. Phil felt lightheaded with how much Dan meant to him, and how much he wanted to be with him always. Dan was the first one to break the silence with a whisper:

“Don’t go.”

Phil hardly dared to breathe and whispered back, “Go where?”

“Away. From here, from me. I can’t…when I think about being without you, I can’t breathe. I don’t care about uni or anyone else here. You’re the only thing that matters.”

Phil didn’t stop to respond, didn’t stop to think, he leaned over and pressed his lips to Dan’s. Dan pulled back for half a second, surprised, but leant back in and returned the kiss with increasing intensity. It felt like an eternity, and Phil pressed the memory into his brain: Dan’s soft lips on his, the feeling of his curls under his hand, how the night chill instantly vanished in that moment.

Eventually, Phil pulled away and quietly said, “I think I’m in love with you.”

“I think I’m in love with you, too,” Dan replied, with tears in his eyes.

Phil laughed touching under Dan’s eyes, “Are you really crying?”

Dan swatted his hand and laughed, “Shut up.”

Phil looked at him fondly, never wanting to look away ever again. “I won’t leave.”

“Okay. Good,” Dan leaned in for another kiss.

For a few more moments, the moon stood sentinel, watching them kiss awash in its light. The stars shone and seemed to dance in jubilee of the professed love. Even the cold, black nothing of space seemed like a warm, velvet blanket to comfort the lovers. Neither would fully admit it afterwards, but that night it truly felt that the universe had been entirely theirs; and though the sky was once again just a sky, it did not matter, because for the rest of their lives, they had their own universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’ve read the whole fic by now you’ve realized that I am incredibly pedantic and can never shut up so I wanted to talk a little more about this fic and I guess some Fun Trivia Facts (lol).
> 
> The incident that caused Dan and Phil to meet actually happened to me. Yes, I was one of two (2) people to say that there were six billion stars in the solar system. That experience has haunted me to this day. Especially as I did not meet a cute boy as a result of it. Alas, life does not imitate art, in this case at least. (Also Dan crying when his prof mentioned Goodnight Moon. That may or may not have been something that I did.) (And my professor actually did invite us to stargaze at the end of the semester if you can believe it, but I did not have a Dan to drag me to go and I stayed home.)
> 
> I used a lot of my own experiences at university to write this. I wanted to focus on the characterization and thus wanted it to be a Generic University™ but I inevitably ended up using my own experiences as a reference. I went to the University of Toronto and while I tried to take as much area-specific information out of it, it probably comes through that I went to a Canadian university. 
> 
> I mainly decided to write a University AU because I don’t see enough of my own (horrible) experiences reflected in Uni AUs. Basically, I apologize if you were expecting parties and sipping on cappuccinos while reading Shakespeare.
> 
> I also apologize for putting like a billion references in here. As you might be able to guess, I’m an English student. And I really, really love Radiohead.
> 
> Two of the worst quotes in here are actually quotes from Dan and Phil. If you recognized them, you get 25 points that can only be redeemed for shame.  
> 1 - Dan saying he’s gonna get “caffed off his tits” - if you thought that was weird, don’t worry, I did too. In the Manchester day in the life he says he’s gonna get “pezzed off his tits” and I hate him so much for that that I had to include it. He is absurd and I love him.  
> 2 - “Let’s look at the stars, that’ll calm you down.” As you may remember, Phil said this to Dan when they played Slender. I know, they’re absolutely disgusting. I’m disgusted. If you thought that was too cheesy or unrealistic, jokes on all of us because they are actually that cheesy and ridiculous in real life.  
> I take full responsibility for every other cheesy line.


End file.
